


Winchester and Plath

by EmrysProngs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Meta, Character Study, Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Gen, Hell Trauma, Lucifer's Cage, Mentions of Past Torture, Post-Hell Sam Winchester, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Cage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 00:13:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15060854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmrysProngs/pseuds/EmrysProngs
Summary: Another character meta drabble about Sam and Lucifer. But, one man understands forgiveness and the other lives in an empty sky.





	Winchester and Plath

A dusty library in Guthrie, Oklahoma, Sam palmed through The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. It’s 1999, and in a rare moment in between hunts the young hunter found a reprieve, a lull, and had sought solitude in the minimal stacks of poetry. Dean was at a bar somewhere, probably telling the chick mixing his drink he was 24 and dangerous and would bring her back to their motel room to get laid. John wasn’t home - but, at this point, it didn’t strike Sam as odd anymore; he barely bat an eye, really. He was 16 now, old enough to be defiant. Old enough to be resentful. **  
**

The last thing - literally, the  _last thing_. He’d take eaten alive by a Wendigo, sucked dry by a Wraith, and a dozen other untimely and gruesome deaths, thank you very much - he wanted was to walk in on Dean with Blonde and Long Legged in their twin sized bed, so he delved into the book with no concept of time. Hours passed, probably, but Sam usually didn’t notice until words blurred together. Somewhere amongst Plath’s entries from November 1955 and April 1956, though, he blanched. The text resonating in a way the teenager couldn’t comprehend.

_“I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.”_

He has very few possessions in his room at the bunker. A worn copy of that book - the pages smell faintly of mildew and masking tape, the binding held together like an old ledger, with criss crossing lines of thread - is one of them. He keeps it under his bed with a cheap book light from Barnes and Noble.

There is a quiet torture in living. At least, living as a supporting character within yourself. Sam isn’t the author of his own narrative, he hasn’t been allowed to contribute to his own story since he was six months old. He’s attempted, obviously, countless times. Each one met with contempt and disruption; with blame and guilt, and Sam apologizes - always. He’s always sorry, always wrong, and always a few lines behind of everyone else in the scene. For a long time, he felt selfish for seeking the basic human right of bodily - and mental - autonomy. Now, though, despite his best efforts, he realizes it’s just not in the cards for him. He is a pawn.

Lucifer gawks in the face of humanity. Rodents infesting on his Daddy’s creation; rat poison killing complex, beautiful people. Sam watching them die on linoleum floors.

He had spent so long desperate to feel more clean, atone for the sins of his predetermined evil, while being beguiled and compared to Satan. At 16, Sam didn’t know he was bottle fed Azazel’s blood like some macabre parallel to nursing from his mother. He prayed to a God in the hopes of being saved, of cleansing a soul he could feel was corrupt. But the sky was empty.

Sam whispered to angels and the Lord and trusted that there was a higher force for good. He wanted to believe, so fucking bad, because he wanted to think that maybe, in the end, he could be saved. The Boy King of Hell, Lucifer’s vessel (and his little bitch, in every sense of the word), maybe, he was a pillar for good, too. He could be cleansed of sin and blood like a martyr on the crucifix.

Arms stretched out in welcome as he fell into the Pit.

A lifetime of sitting in his own impurity, that no secret Confessionals could satisfy, have left Sam in the position to boil hatred. He has been given the same opportunity as Lucifer to dismiss forgiveness as a petty construct, let blame victimize him into malevolence. Sam’s capacity for relentless, unwavering faith, is what kept him from the destiny Heaven and Hell tried to catapult. Manipulation, lack of agency, and substantial self doubt walk into a bar and talk about all the ways they can make Sam Winchester turn.

But the sky is empty.

He took a deep breath through his nose, wondering how he could feel so vile and nauseated, at the same time, so agitated, thrilling with fear, insubordination and  _feelings_. This is what it meant to be human. To feel with ferocity, so many emotions littering your frame that you couldn’t discern them all. But, isn’t that also what it meant to be an angel? Confused and lost and angry and passionate and reeling.

Played like a fiddle with broken strings, he followed - what he had thought - was God’s call blindly back into the Cage. He wishes he could stare with dead eyes at the archangel, scowl with contempt and loathsome reprimand. But he  _can’t_. He harbors a very visceral fear of Lucifer. How he is sullied and shameful and wounded beyond what even Dean can mend.

_“Being dead, I rose up again, and even resort to the mere sensation value of being suicidal, of getting so close.”_

Scars are the body’s reaction to trauma. Adhesions on the tissues affecting skin, muscles, tendons, or, you know, maybe souls. New proteins - collagen - fibers replaced the injured tissues and like a callous, a barrier of stronger tissues is formed in its place. Skin is flexible, functional, mobile. It’s elastic and bendable, but fragile and tears when you’re five and just got your training wheels off but haven’t learned to break yet.  Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Sam may be made of scars, but that just means he is knitted back together under layer of thicker skin. He isn’t open, puss filled or bleeding. And he sure as  _hell_  isn’t going to express empathy for the devil.

He flinches, though, each time the archangel calls him  _Sammy_. It feels like a violation and he suspects Lucifer knows that. He folds his arms over his chest, hoping the body language could hide any trepidation and remaining antipathy.

“You’re not getting him. I won’t let you anywhere  _near_  Jack. Do you understand me? Whatever game you’re trying to pull, I’m not here for it. You’re tried out, you know. How many things have you done and where do you always end up? Where are you  _always_  going to end up?”

The sky was empty.


End file.
